In February 2024, The New Yorker published an article that paints a grave picture of the state of the media industry. Its opening image is reminiscent of a scene where a herd of dinosaurs helplessly await the impact of an impending comet.

The year 2023 witnessed 2,681 layoffs in the broadcast, print, and digital news media industry, which echoes the sentiment. 

Pressing challenges

As publishers prepare for a potential extinction-level event, the forces that drove it to this are already well-known:

  • Consumers are burned out by an overload of online content
  • Social media sites have become more expensive for promoting articles.
  • Organic reach is at the mercy of the platforms (Meta has less than 5% organic reach)
  • With AI integration, search queries are directly answered within Google’s interface.
  • Publisher ad revenues have dropped even as tech companies have recovered
  • Trust in the media has eroded

While brands with heavy homepage traffic may have some runway left, those that don't find themself typed into the browser directly have their days numbered. 

So, how do publishers make money in 2024? 

One way is to have editorially curated homepages like HuffPost, Drudge, and CNN.com, where people visit exclusively for news content. However, few publishers enjoy such a reputation, which can take years to build. Subscriptions are another option, but that means competing with entertainment and digital streaming services for the same share of wallet.

When business is terrible, norms can change. Publishers need to look at new ways to improve user experience.

Could video AI solutions change the game?

 

The growing challenges in the media industry have been accompanied by an unprecedented rise in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities over the past few years. Today's AI tools can enable publishers to speed up production, customize content, and improve monetization. 

As we prepared to publish this article, OpenAI unveiled Sora. This state-of-the-art text-to-video model can generate high-quality, high-fidelity 1-minute videos with different aspect ratios and resolutions. 

The model understands what users ask in the prompt and how those things exist in the physical world. Powered by a version of the diffusion model used by OpenAI'sOpenAI's Dalle-3 image generator as well as the transformer-based engine of GPT-4, Sora not only churns out videos that fulfill the demands of the prompts but does so in a way that shows an emergent grasp of cinematic grammar. This could translate into a robust use case of video-based storytelling. 

Why Video matters

 

The demand for video content is growing, and its influence is strong:

  • 89% of people watch videos online every day
  • 82% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video
  • Consumers strongly feel that video influences their trust in a brand

For publishers looking to enter the world of video, Aeon's GenAI video solution can rapidly convert every piece of written content that is published into compelling videos. Built for publishers by publishing veterans, this AI-assisted solution enables publishers to efficiently 

produce high-quality videos at scale while preserving their unique journalistic style and voice.

Addressing the revenue dilemma: Video's solution

Advertising has always battled for attention. People have narrow attention spans in today's technologically disrupted world of devices, apps, and algorithms. An oversaturation of banner ads and the rise of ad blockers have significantly diminished ad visibility and engagement. Video content, by contrast, offers higher engagement rates.

Viewers retain 95% of a message on video compared to 10% when reading it in a text. The increase in click-through rate with video is as high as 96%, while users are 12 times more likely to share videos than links and text combined. On social media, news is the second most popular type of video, as per a report by Ofcom. 

But, despite video's proven effectiveness, most web pages still predominantly display static content. For publishers, this is a potential revenue opportunity waiting to be leveraged. By incorporating more video content, publishers can enhance engagement and achieve significantly higher CPMs.

Making the transition to Video content can bring new challenges.

Scaling beyond a handful of videos to accompany written content has historically required a significant investment of resources. It can present unfamiliar challenges:

  • What Ad formats to use?
  • How do you choose the proper Ad density?
  • Where should we strike a balance between profitability and user experience?
  • How to Place In-Stream Video Ads?
  • What monetization method to choose? 
  • How do I comply with the IAB Guidelines? 

As publishers make this transition, the decision-making can be optimized using AI-based software and services that simplify the value chain. They serve to navigate the production process efficiently and can deliver instream-ready branded videos that align closely with the written content. 

For example, Aeon's streamlined workflow accelerates video production, ensuring relevance to the target page while seamlessly incorporating the publisher's brand identity. This results in highly engaging content that boosts audience retention and maximizes ad views.

This enables publishers unfamiliar with video techniques to condense years of navigating capability gaps to mere months via automation.

Using Video to Improve Content Discovery

Publishers have traditionally struggled to cope with the content needs of the digital era, but demographics drive a more recent change. Video is the language Gen Z speaks, and they are on track to make up a quarter of the world's income by 2030. 

For publishers desperately looking for an audience, video could be the answer, and AI could be a powerful enabler. AI-assisted video production and editing are significantly cheaper and faster. 

Many redundant tasks are time-consuming and performed by professionals who could apply their skills to other focus areas while increasing the overall volume of video output.

Using video to drive traffic requires a strategy.

But publishers need to be smart about how they use video. Combating traffic decline is not a one-off process. It will require a well-defined AI strategy where the video is an essential driver of audience behavior. Publishers must use video as a marketing tool, a language they must learn to speak to succeed in the digital world.

Aeon's patented AI technology helps achieve this using low-lift user inputs to automatically produce storyboards using headlines, context, content, and source or generate media assets. It enables quick revisions or edits as required while generating high-quality video in any format. The backend engine self-optimizes videos to maximize monetization.

Addressing reader burnout with personalized video

Attention is a finite resource. People are exposed to between 6,000 and 10,000 ads in a day. Over seven million blogs are published daily, while over 2500 videos are uploaded on YouTube every minute. The average human brain cannot process such a bombardment of content, meaning most content is ignored or forgotten within seconds.

Developing strategies to manage and prioritize information is challenging for publishers and marketers.

Personalized video content could be the answer to reader burnout. Imagine a video tailored just for you (and nobody else). It has the context that you understand. It knows what you take seriously and what you don't. It conveys the message with the words that register with meaning for you. It has imagery that connects to you. Personalized AI-generated videos can combine compelling storytelling with the best formats you digest.

Effectively engaging diverse audiences requires a blend of personalization and mass customization. AI technologies pack these capabilities to address the challenges of mass customization. 

Create more scalable and premium AI videos through Aeon: a step-by-step guide.

  • Step 1: Identify high-performing or strategic text content within your digital portfolio as candidates for video transformation.
  • Step 2: Use Aeon's platform to input these articles and generate corresponding videos, customizing them according to brand guidelines and audience preferences.
  • Step 3: Integrate these videos to accompany your written content across your owned and operated websites and social handles to enhance user engagement and ad inventory.
  • Step 4: Best Practice: Empower Aeon to regularly analyze and optimize video performance metrics to refine content strategy, focusing on topics and formats that yield the highest engagement and ad revenue.

The future of digital media with video AI

The AI-human partnership in the digital media industry has the potential to supercharge creative output and change user workflows forever. It may even define new crafts. Here are some trends to watch for:

  • Human refinement and perfection combined with AI's capacity for creativity and creation will decide the winners in the future.
  • The risk of content commoditization is real; the challenge lies in ensuring the content continues providing unique value.
  • Differentiation will be achieved through data-driven, adaptive content. 
  • Future media will dynamically adapt to individual preferences, create personalized experiences, and interact with audiences in real time. 
  • A shift from static to dynamic content will fundamentally alter the business landscape. Consumer expectations will evolve, and the actual value will lie in mastering an interactive content-data loop.

Much of the value of gen AI will come from tailoring it to specific use cases. Because successful integration of gen AI technologies will require experimentation and iteration, early adopters will enjoy a competitive edge.

Conclusion

The digital media landscape is constantly evolving, and innovative solutions are required to keep up with the changes. Video AI is considered a promising solution that can help publishers tackle the challenges they face. Here are the key takeaways:

1. Embrace Video AI: To overcome industry woes, it is essential to integrate technologies like OpenAI's Sora and Aeon's GenAI. These technologies can transform text into engaging videos.

2. Leverage Video's Dominance: Video content is unmatched when it comes to engaging audiences. It is indispensable for capturing their attention and unlocking new revenue streams.

3. Navigate Towards a Video-First Future: The transition to video AI is not just a trend but a strategic imperative for staying relevant in an increasingly digital world.

Embracing video AI is a crucial step towards a more engaging, dynamic, and profitable digital media era. This can position publishers at the forefront of innovation and audience connection.